[EM] piling on against IRV

[Jameson Quinn]

Personally, I can say that I respected both of you before this exchange, and
that I respect each of you a little less after it. You got so caught up in
name-calling, you couldn't see how close you both were to common ground.

There are three reasons a person might rank less-than-fully in IRV. It might
be a choice, akin to the choice to not vote in a second round. In that case,
the last round majority is in any common usage a majority, even if it is
less than 50% of the first-round votes. It might be forced by the system,
because of a limited number of voting slots. In that case, anything under
50% of first round is NOT a majority. Or it could be due to misunderstanding
of the voting system, or mismarking the ballot (say, equal rankings). In
that case, the usage is debatable, but I probably wouldn't call it a
majority.

There is no way to tell the exact combination of these three reasons. But if
there is no limit on how many rankings, then I'd say that using "majority"
is arguable either way - not an out-and-out lie, but arguably deceptive -
and if there is a limit, then it's an undefensible lie.

There's room for honest disagreement here without name-calling.

Also, TTR theoretically gives almost always the same result as IRV, but in
reality the "comes from behind" scenario happens in a non-negligible
fraction of cases.

One way to avoid getting caught in a back-and-forth gotcha-fest is to
restate your position succinctly, without a line-by-line response. Then,
even more succinctly, you can charitably restate the couterarguments. The
goal when restating the counterarguments is to show your understanding of
their strengths, not to undermine them by showing their weaknesses. Last and
briefest of all, you can give counter-counter-arguments; these should
essentially just point back at the relevant bits of your initial statement.

If you're going to send someone to the killfile, don't tell them when you've
done it. Threatening it as a last resort might sometimes be productive,
though you should avoid it if your dander is up; but saying "you're in my
killfile now" is about equivalent to "la la la la la I can't hear you".

My opinion,
JQ
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